[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Being President Means Never Having to Say He' s Sorry

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Being President Means Never Having to Say He's Sorry

October 12, 2004
 By DEBORAH TANNEN 



 

We heard a lot about mistakes in the second presidential
debate. Senator John Kerry declared that rushing to war in
Iraq unilaterally without adequate plans to win the peace
was a catastrophic mistake. From President Bush we heard,
Mistakes? Not me. You can't lead the world if you say your
country made a mistake. 

It is no surprise that the president took that position.
It's one he has stuck to throughout the campaign. (Well, he
did try to soften that stance a bit in the second debate.
He admitted he had made some mistaken appointments, but of
course he couldn't name them or it would hurt those
people's feelings.) His "Mistakes? Never touch the stuff!"
approach is part of the hypermasculine persona he tries to
put forth, along with his stay-the-course, go-it-alone,
never-waver profile. 

How is that stance likely to be received by female voters?
Democrats and Republicans alike have set their sights on
winning women's votes come Nov. 2. Historically, more women
than men vote (eight million more in 2000) and a larger
percentage of women vote Democratic (in 2000, by 11
percentage points for Al Gore while men preferred Mr. Bush
by 11 percentage points). To raise the stakes, a poll
conducted recently by Time magazine found that 61 percent
of undecided voters were women. That's why, many people
think, Mr. Kerry appeared on "Live With Regis and Kelly,"
and why Mr. Bush has begun talking about how the overthrow
of the Taliban has helped Afghan women. 

Perhaps it was not by chance that it was a woman who asked
the president, at the town hall debate last Friday, to list
three instances in which he had made wrong decisions since
taking office. If women react to Mr. Bush's made-no-mistake
tactic the way they react to it when it is used by men in
their lives, a majority may well be more angered than
reassured. That's because it drives many women nuts when
men won't say they made a mistake and apologize if they do
something wrong. I'm reminded of a woman who was angry at
her husband because she had given him an important letter
to mail and he'd assured her he'd mail it, then told her
the next day, "I forgot to mail your letter," and stopped
there. She waited in vain for the sentence to continue,
"I'm sorry." In the end, she was angry not about the letter
but about the missing apology. 

Many men learn, from the time they're children, to avoid
apologizing, because it entails admitting fault, and that's
risky for them. Boys have to be on their guard against
appearing weak - either literally, by losing fights, or
figuratively, in the way they speak - because if they act
or talk in ways that show weakness, other boys will take
advantage and push them around. 

But refusing to apologize infuriates women because that
makes it seem as if the guy doesn't care that he let her
down, and if he doesn't care, there's no reason to think he
won't do it again. This is the negative effect - the
collateral damage - that Mr. Bush's "certainty" is certain
to have on many women: if he won't admit he made a mistake
in his handling of Iraq, it seems he doesn't care about the
American soldiers killed and maimed, the civilians
beheaded, about the Iraqi children blown up by insurgents'
bombs. 

The role of talk about "mistakes" in the rhetoric of the
debate was particularly striking when Mr. Bush intoned, and
repeated, that no one will follow a president who says the
war was a mistake. With this, he tried, aikido-like, to pin
on his opponent the stigma of association with the word
"mistake," even as the stigmatizing mistakes were not Mr.
Kerry's, but those of which Mr. Kerry accused him. (It made
me think of the children's taunt, "I am rubber, you are
glue, anything you say bounces off me and sticks to you.")
It's a clever manipulation of language. 

Will it work? Probably with fewer women than men, because
most women don't regard admitting fault as a liability.
Instead, they value it as a sign of caring - and a
necessary prerequisite to maintain credibility. The British
Labor Party seems to regard this as true for the British
electorate; Tony Blair, in order to keep his party's
support, had to admit publicly last month that he was wrong
about his reasons for going to war. Similarly, in the
election-changing debate between Senator John F. Kennedy
and Vice President Richard Nixon, Nixon insisted that the
United States must never apologize to the Soviet Union for
having sent a U-2 plane on a spying mission into its
territory even though we were caught red-handed when the
plane was shot down. And it was the victorious Kennedy who
argued that the United States must admit fault and "express
regret." 

If Mr. Bush's made-no-mistake bravado can be understood by
looking to the power struggles of boys at play, when
cornered, he often plays the mischievous but lovable child
- a little boy so cute, so charming, you really can't be
mad at him. On Friday night, he displayed that coy persona
in first saying, "I'm not telling," when asked about
possible Supreme Court appointments. But the charming
little boy will probably also undercut his credibility if
he reminds mothers of their own little boys who insist, "I
didn't eat the cookie - he did!" even as cookie crumbs are
clinging to their chins. 

In his campaign appearances, Mr. Bush has been saying that
what matters isn't caring but doing. This may be an attempt
to deal with the "compassion gap" that has long dogged
Republicans, and has widened under the Bush administration.
But caring is the prerequisite for doing, and that's why
many women value apologies and admitting mistakes. 

Appeal to women will surely be at the forefront of both
candidates' minds in tomorrow night's debate, since
domestic issues like jobs and health care are believed to
be a top priority among female voters. It will be
interesting to see if the president is asked the mistake
question about these issues as well, and, if he is, how he
chooses to respond. 

Deborah Tannen, a professor oflinguistics at Georgetown
University, is the author, most recently, of" I Only Say
This Because I Love You." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/12/opinion/12tannen.html?ex=1098605738&ei=1&en=64e3f2fa4cfc31ad


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